Analysis Method Based on Impression Words for Impression Evaluation Method by Space

Introduction

In recent years, in addition to functions and convenience, Kansei topics such as design have become important. Kansei is a word that means how people feel. Because Kansei is vague, it is difficult to precisely capture and quantify it. Moreover, because Kansei differs for each person, it is difficult to evaluate.

The semantic differential (SD) method (Osgood, Suci & Tannenbaum, 1957) is often used to evaluate Kansei. Because the SD method digitizes impressions, it enables statistical processing and makes it possible to perform various analyses. However, to enable statistical processing, the evaluation is required to be performed in a predefined range. As a result, it is difficult to evaluate vague aspects of Kansei. A method enabling the evaluation of the vagueness of Kansei is required. Although various research efforts concerning the expression of Kansei have been conducted (Choi & Okazaki, 2011; Tazaki & Okazaki, 2008; Kashiwazaki, 2004), such an evaluation method has not yet been established. An impression evaluation method considering the vagueness of Kansei has been proposed in order to overcome this issue (Akai, Hochin & Nomiya, 2012). The proposed method uses a plane containing impression words. The impression of an object is specified by circling the areas matching the impression. The degree of matching of the impression is expressed by the painting color. This method is called the Impression Evaluation Method by Space (IEMS).

An analysis method of the evaluation results of the IEMS has also been proposed (Akai, Hochin & Nomiya, 2013a; Akai, Hochin & Nomiya, 2013b). It shows average values and coefficients of variation of scores of the evaluation results spatially. By using this analysis method, which is called the basic analysis method, the characteristics of the impression of objects and the dispersion among subjects could easily be obtained. The basic analysis method, however, has a restriction: the impression words in the impression space must not be moved. As the impression words can be moved and/or added in the IEMS, this restriction is very serious. Almost all of the evaluation results cannot be analyzed because the impression words are often moved and/or added.

This paper proposes an analysis method of the evaluation results obtained through the IEMS even if the impression words are moved. The proposed method focuses on the impression words. The numbers of the impression words circled are spatially displayed. This method enables us to visually capture the tendency of impression of objects because impression words having similar impression are placed nearer than those having different impression in the Kansei space. The results of the analysis are reviewed to show the effectiveness of the proposed analysis method.

This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 shows the IEMS, the impression evaluation system based on the IEMS, and the analysis method of the evaluation results for the baseline Kansei space. Section 3 proposes an analysis method of the evaluation results based on impression words. The proposed analysis method is tried to be applied to the evaluation results in Section 4. Section 5 gives some considerations. Finally, Section 6 concludes this paper.